FILM ME IN

A journey from INFINITE JEST to THE END OF THE TOUR.

How imperative is it to read the book should you discover the film you intend to see has derived from one? Exactly much effort does one have to go to get the most fulfilment out of a film? I like to be as up-to-speed as one possibly can but at some point there has to be a limit, particularly when films rather than books are your first love. I usually find there are two scenarios, the first is that I will have read a book and now I anticipate how it will translate onto screen. The next is when browsing shelves at designated shops or department stores, I’ll discover a film I’m interested in seeing was in fact originally a book, suddenly in paperback edition, complete with the film poster and the words ‘now a major motion picture’ emblazoned on the cover. In the latter scenario it’s unlikely that I’ll read the book and just wait for the film for if it’s a film that I’m absolutely frothing at the mouth to see I assume the book revelation would have presented itself in some way prior to my passing shelves, ultimately lending itself to the previous scenario. Equal parts laziness and indifference (since it’s quicker to spend a hundred minutes with a film than considerably longer with a book) I’ll most likely go straight to the film rather than leaving the store with a brand new paperback in hand.

Reading the book could potentially destroy the film anyway and if the film doesn’t turn out to be particularly good on its own merit, the result of a piss poor adaptation then no love lost I guess. There’s countless notable exceptions to the book is better rule of course (The Birds, Jaws, Apocalypse Now), and in some cases you get your movies that are a neat and faithful little depiction (The Princess Bride, The Perks Of Being a Wallflower, Gone Girl) but unfortunately the majority are ones where you feel completely and utterly ripped off after investing much time to your now beloved, dog-eared, yellowing, literary companion (Madam Bovary, Angela’s Ashes, One For The Money). But I recently familiarised myself with not only a book but the book’s author who posthumously has become the subject of a major motion picture. I don’t know why this one particular film, or trailer for a film, made me intent on going the full hog in terms of extensive reading and I can say with utter conviction that the months of reading with grand hopes of cinematic enlightenment was in hindsight a thoroughly valuable experience but this almost obsessive labour of love, at times, strictly resembled labour. Equal parts tedious and rewarding, I’m still grappling as to whether I took my ‘need to be informed’ notion much too far or whether such pedantic behaviour and unwritten prerequisites formed an immeasurable achievement. Now let me get to the book in question and put you out of your misery as I describe my own…

All I wanted to do was watch a film. It was never meant to be this hard. I had heard a film was being made about a former Rolling Stone writer – David Lipsky’s Although Of Couse You End Up Becoming Yourself which concerns the time the then journalist travelled with author David Foster Wallace on the book tour for his fictional master-work Infinite Jest. The trailer looked like my cup of tea, hell I like books and films and here appeared an eccentric, reclusive young writer and a personal account from someone that was granted privileged access to his mind and world. David Foster Wallace is portrayed by Jason Segel and Lipsky – Jesse Eisenberg two actors that have rarely let me down in TV and film respectively but I wasn’t going to let myself off that easy and just see the film for mental groundwork was already in play as to the task I would have to undergo beforehand.

I should point out that I had never read David Foster Wallace. All I knew about the man was that he had committed suicide and yet the authors name continually would pop up as often as his Infinite Jest which anyone who had actually read seemed to discuss favourably even if the premise itself was rarely mentioned. Little bits of information filtered through but usually the superficial stuff like how difficult this book was, even if coupled with favourable, single word reviews like ‘amazing’ and ‘awesome’. Infinite Jest slowly harboured an air of mystique in my little bubble of casual reading particularly with regards to the footnotes that when compiled were the length of an entire book on their own. A picture started to form in my mind that perhaps this Wallace guy was either crazy or genius or most likely both. Needless to say I wasn’t particularly eager to ever put myself through such an arduous task.

Then the trailer for The End Of The Tour made me consider otherwise. From memory it was a heavily touted film at the festivals, and contained the kind of pedigree that screamed ‘sink your teeth into this – it’s up your alley etc’. Without knowing anything more than what the trailer presented and a few vague nuggets of information about who the key players were based upon, I was suddenly curious, and as the forms of entertainment stars aligned I was berating myself for not being across such artists and their stories sooner. Damn the almighty films for they finally gave me the reason or excuse I needed – I would just smash out this Infinite Jest, no – in fact I would go one further, I then back it up with Lipskys account of the book tour Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself and then finally and only when armed with the knowledge of having read the book that the tour was based on and an understanding of how the tour played out I would see how it all translates in Hollywoodland. So I acquired both books. At a glance Infinite Jest looked like one Infinite Pest, its bulky hardback if thrown against the wall in frustration could have caused some serious window or plaster damage. Scanning the back for these infamous footnotes, they certainly lived up to their infamy as I flicked through endless pages of tiny writing… some of these footnotes had footnotes of their own and the text just kept getting smaller. I left it again for another time.

With plenty of other films screaming for my attention, The End Of the Tour could wait. Hell, I still want to see Ron Howard’s In the Heart Of The Sea but you don’t see me rushing out to read Moby Dick, but I now had Infinite Jest in my possession for this very reason and I wasn’t going to cheat. The movie came and went from our cinemas and as the clock ticked I realised this would have to wait for DVD and in the limbo period I would attempt to read it once more. Before long the cover stared back at me from a DVD vending machine on my weekly grocery shop. I felt that pang of guilt and self-loathing that comes with sheer procrastination.

I’ve been in a book club with friends for a few years now and finally someone suggested we read Infinite Jest, ‘perfect’ I thought for now I would definitely have to read it in the allocated time. I knew I needed to get moving on this fat mother, put the thumb twiddling to bed. But then at the last minute the book club selection moved to another Wallace effort which was comparatively smaller and what I predicted would be relatively easier – a collection of short stories entitled Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. I can’t say I was devastated that I didn’t have to get the jump on Jest but I figured maybe short stories would be a better introduction to this author. I discovered there’s even a movie of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men starring and directed by John Krasinski (still haven’t seen it) but that did spur me on to get reading.

As I read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men I couldn’t shake the fact that the life of this phenomenal mind had ended in tragedy and I know it may sound insensitive but ‘crazy/ genius’ were words that plagued me the whole time. It wouldn’t be until much later that I realised Wallace was unwell both physically with blood pressure and mentally as he had been taking medication for depression for the majority of his life. I also wondered if perhaps Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was simply an exercise in experimentation, a bit of comedy, tragedy and art wank all compiled into one book and that surely the heavily revered Infinite Jest would be a bit more consistent with a clear narrative…

I was in no way keen to follow it up with Infinite Jest but my trusty and heavily consulted IMDB Watchlist served as constant reminder that I was still two books away from watching The End Of The Tour so one day for no apparent reason I placed the bulky bugger into my backpack and began reading. What I didn’t consider at this moment was the timing for such an undertaking couldn’t have been worse.

Sure, this 1000 + small text monolith was tough. I found it difficult to get in the groove, hundreds of pages deep and I was occasionally still none the wiser on what I was reading or what the key intention was and although it loosely established who’s story I should essentially be following more so than others, the characters just kept coming and the stories at a glance seemed to stray from what I had come to grasp as a central place of familiarity. As well as being a hard slog it was at times ghostly, other times poignant, often hilarious and always detailed (that devil) to the point of frustration all undoubtedly making it one of the most fascinating and often confusing reads I’ll ever encounter and yet gradually a shift came where I started to melt into the writer’s style until the effort slipped away, and that’s not to suggest the writing got lazier the deeper you went either. Deciphering each puzzle piece hidden amongst its style in search for clues as to the McGuffin of the piece which is an elusive movie with lethal powers, I dare say eventually became something of a joy.

Outside of the book itself the demands of reality beckoned and what I should have been more mindful of was the actual time in my life that I had chosen to read it. I was setting myself up for a punishment that I had failed to foresee as I truly believed that by blindly throwing this book into my backpack I was therefore ensuring it will be consumed since changing my mind mid-read is not a mental luxury I possess as once it’s in the bag it remains there until completion. I still however figured it would be a breeze, the number of pages being its sole hurdle. I’ve read the occasional 1000+ book in the past and don’t remember complaining that a book was ever any sort of chore. But what must have slipped my mind was that I had a two month old baby at home and a brand new role at work! So essentially life consisted of either wearing the professional workplace hat or the Dad hat with a forty minute train ride / reading window between each totalling just over an hour of reading time per day.

Training for a new role is never a factor I have generally warmed to or found easy, I was having to become familiar with new programs, processes, colleagues, demands and challenges all while eagerly attempting to be as up-to-speed in the shortest amount of time as possible while people within the business placed expectations upon me that suggested I had been performing the role for years. The train ride home was an Infinite brain-waster after an entire day of deep concentration and aggressively filling exercise books with as many notes as I could hand write in rapid succession. Nights consisted of making up for lost time with a baby that’s still learning new tricks by the hour and keeping her entertained as a distraction while dinners were made and dishes were cleaned. The blurry eyed train rides hardly lent themselves to the likes of Infinite Jest.

On average I was reading approximately thirty five pages per weekday – weekends reading more? Forget it! Thirty five pages became imperative, I could have possibly read more but I wanted to do the read justice, it would have been very easy to just scan the page or flick through it like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit 2 (bar Frankenstein and Pinocchio) but in order to absorb everything and to stay in the moment without letting the mind drift, the average was thirty five pages a day. I even fantasised about multiple sick days where I could enforce a hundred-pages-a-day rule but what message would abusing the system send to my new colleagues? So the book dragged on for months and each time I stepped onto the train I had no idea what sort of a read I was in for – abstract and absurd? Hauntingly sad or just haunting and sad? Quirky and amusing? Or perhaps a forty minute session of what seemed like complete and utter gibberish. Mentally I was coming home and checking out, and yet sleep didn’t come too easy either as my mind was plagued with new things learned at work, concerns for a screaming baby which could flare up at any given moment and flashes of the book repeating on me in bouts of insomnia, which suddenly made clear sense in the a.m. as opposed to when I had the book open before me hours earlier.

Then there were the woe-is-me physical strains – the weight on my back as I lobbed it around with my lunch, my umbrella and various other man-sentials. The constant allocation of footnotes – two bookmarks were required to avoid further frustration as a sentence would become interrupted with additional valuable information but each luminous number on the page became a certified hindrance, as did reach my train stop mid-sentence and if someone happened to be talking on their phone beside me – forget it, my concentration instantly turned to mush rendering the essential daily reading period useless. Inch by inch and bit by bit I worked my way through, as I journeyed through the lives of drug addicts and future tennis stars and at times both until one fine sunny day it was all over! Interviews with hideous David Foster Wallace suggest Infinite Jest contains within its gargantuan pages a satisfying ending that’s all neatly wrapped up but only if you’re willing to work for such an ending. Hmmm.

Lipsky was next in the firing line and since it was a series of Dictaphone recorded conversations it was comparatively easy. Essentially the book is transcribed audio tapes intended for a Rolling Stone interview with Wallace that never did get published. I did revel in this one as it was an interesting glimpse into the mind of a very sensitive and super-self-conscious but otherwise insightful and brilliant artist. Finally after months (probably closer to a year of anticipation) I got to watch The End Of The Tour. Part of me wants to tell you it wasn’t worthwhile and that the real prize was finishing Infinite Jest, and that it took a single movie trailer to inspire a much more compelling literary experience. That is true to a point, but to be honest I loved the film, and no one was more ready to watch this film as I was at this precise moment, I was damn-well-fucking-prepared! After reading Lipskys book I would have argued that this story was un-filmable but it truly tapped into a fan’s perspective of a true talent, it was stunning to watch a relationship blossom out of both awe and apprehension from the key players, and as films often do – it elevated mystique (Wallace’s) and the portrayal of which, gathered from what I’ve seen in interviews on youtube seemed profoundly accurate. Sure certain conversations appeared embellished after reading the real thing, but wasn’t it Chopper Read that said ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn’?

But all in all was it worth the joy, pain and heartache of months of reading just to watch a film? Well I can’t speak so much for the film itself, I most likely won’t watch it again but there’s a sick part of my brain that’s already been urging me to begin Infinite Jest once again, something I vowed would never happen twice. In the time since I’ve read it, themes and plot points and ideas have stayed with me and unwittingly urged me to uncover their meanings both on the immediate and greater sense, but a full exploration will ultimately require another read and I can already feel that one day soon I will need to dispel these ideas by working my way through it all over again.